Friday, February 26, 2016

Feb. 26: How capitalists are giving greed a bad name.

John Pilger is one of the great journalists of our time. (And our time doesn't have many of them.)
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I could see no reason to read any news in section A of the Irving press. Well, there is one story by Brent Mazerolle that could have been interesting if he had done just a little bit of research, and phoning around the universities. Yesterday, Moncton set a new temperature record for this winter day, a record of warmth.
Actually, I had kind of noticed that, looking out my window at all the green lawns and the kilometres of bare grassland along the river. Could this possibly mean something, Brent? Could it have anything to do with climate change?
Nah. There is no climate change. If there were, Mr. Irving would tell us; and he'd help us.
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The editorial is about the old Moncton High, and it's conversion to a library and theatre. As is the New Brunswick norm, all the editorial writer can think about is the cost. (Well, that's not entirely fair. When the hundred million dollar hockey rink was proposed, nobody at the paper gave a damn about the cost.)

Norbert has a quite decent column - if not about one of burning issues of our time.

Cole Hobson's is decent; as is Brian Murphy's.

Alec Bruce's column isn't really a commentary at all. It's an utterly pointless story that looks as if it were written by Brent Mazerolle.

Oh, sorry. The last page has a story worth reading. It continues the saga of Chief Justice Smith, with the Gallant government responding to his charge that it was improper for the government to announce a veto over where judges could live. It was done while Justice Smith was on holiday, so the government saw no reason why it could not go ahead simply by telling his replacement about it.

And that is one hell of stupid reason to make such a change in the conduct of our courts while the Chief Justice is away. What was the urgency? Doesn't the government have phones or computers? This one has a very bad smell.
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Most of Canada and World is local. And most of that is trivial. And some of it is no news value whatever. For an example of the latter, check a headline on B1. "Hydraulic fracturing commission report imminent." That's like announcing, "I'm going to go to the bathroom this evening." (Fine. But I don't care. If you must, tell me what it was like when you're done.")

This story is half a page long, and really isn't a story at all. (Anyway, I think we can all guess what it will recommend.)

There's almost a half page of nothing about the U.S. Republican leadership debate of last night. Of course not. It hadn't yet been held when the paper went to press. This is another non-story.

There's almost half a page on smokers and drinkers paying heavier taxes in Ontario. Do you really, really care?

In the whole of Canada and the World, there are three stories worth reading. Two of them are about missing and murdered indigenousl women. Just since 1980, 1,000 have been reported as murdered - and thee is some evidence that the number of murdered and missinig is really higher. and no Canadian government, then or earlier, has shown the slightest interest. Now, for the first time, there is some movement.

In the other story, the French government has been to bulldoze a vile piece of land that is a refugee settlement at Calais. Thousands live there in tents pitched, each touching the nest, on mud, sometimes on open water, whole families including babies sleeping on the ground, and with almost no sanitation. They're at Calais because they want to go to Britain. But they can't because Britain is too bigoted and racist to let them in.

This is the real price of oil.

There's still not a mention of the suffering of the whole nation of Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world which is being starved and bombed by one of the richest nations in the world, Saudi Arabia. And Saudi Arabia is being supplied with bombs and weapons by other rich nations like the U.S., Britain, ---and by Canada, the true north strong and free.

Oh Canada, we stand on guard for ---whatever.

There can be no doubt now. The lack of any news in the Irving press about Yemen is not accident or sloppiness or even ignorance. It's deliberate.
In the same vein, there is very little news about the middle east, despite the reality of what is going on there. What is going on is the early stage of World War Three. At centre stage, it's a war of Russia and Syria and Iran against the U.S., Britain, France, The Netherlands, ISIL, Iraq, Al Quaeda, Canada and a few others.

How many do you need for a world war?

The line-ups are confusing because the U.S. claims to fighting terrorism, but has been using major terrorist groups to be its proxies in fighting Syria. These include Al Quaeda and ISIL. As well, almost everybody else in the region is involved.

Then in other, and often related wars, you have Israel with its eye on Lebanon, Turkey with its determination to destroy the Kurds, Iran and Saudi Arabia struggling against each other for regional dominance...and so it goes.

The war on terrorism has nothing to do with terrorism. In fact, without western help the 'terrorists' wouldn't be able to function at all. The U.S. and Turkey have been working together to use ISIL and Al Quaeda to destroy Syria. The strategy now seems to be to destroy civil society in most of the middle east, creating a patchwork of tiny and helpless states that can be used to keep our oil billionaires happy.

So far, Obama and Erdogan and others have been outplayed by Putin. That's why the U.S. is makiing noises about the Ukraine and moving in more troops and weapons. That is intended to weaken Russian support for Syria by forcing Russia keep more of its military at home.

And what if Russia continues to outplay the U.S. and its friends? That's when we will all learn for sure that this is World War Three.
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I really have to mention the best column in the paper. It's in the Life section, on C3. It's about bilingualism in New Brunswick, and it's by Mhairi Agnew, a grade 10 student at Moncton High.
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The CBC has a story, missed by the Irving press, that disaster relief over the next five years will cost Canada $3 billion dollars. They say part of the reason is climate change. But they should fire reporters who say that. We know that climate change is myth created by people who just look for trouble.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canada-extreme-weather-costs-pbo-report-1.3465264
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Then there's this story about children, often children on their own, in the Calais refugee camp. This was done by us, by the whole western world. We did it as a favour to the very wealthiest of the oil billionaires, to make sure they could control all the profits of the oil fields.The wealthy will still have contempt for us, though, and wil treat us the same way when it suits them. After all, they are the superior race.

Think of those thousands of children, effectively orphaned by us. I cannot imagine a stronger image of pure evil.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/calais-jungle-refugee-camp-unaccompanied-minors-1.3463741
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There are site that I have long avoided in this blog. Some have been because I distrust them - and still do. But some are ones I have avoided because I know many readers will distrust them. I have used RT at times - because it has a story I know is true. But sometimes I avoid it because I know many readers will react negatively to it - because it is a Russian source, and Russians, you know, aren't honest like our Canadian and American news sources are. But John Pilger's column, quoted above, put some backbone in me.
Pilger is a journalist as respect as they come. He frequently appears in The Guardian which is probably the best, English language paper in the world. And he says Information Clearing House is one of the five or six best news sources in the world. So I'm going to publish this one which I found in ICH, but which I will show in its original form which will flash red lights for some leaders. That's because the word socialist appears in the site's name.

But this story makes sense, and I've seen plenty of confirmation of it in the last several years.

And for readers who get goosbumps at the word socialist, I can only ask whether you've notice that western papers with lie and propagandize never call themselves something like 'The capitalist times'. That, at least, would be honest for those papers which operate in the most repressive, police states in human history, which are owned by private capitalists, and which constantly lie to us.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/25/pers-f25.html
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And here's one ICH that I may already have mentioned in an earlier post, talking it from Haaretz.

Israel is not a democracy. It has deliberately and constantly abused the 20% of its population that is Palestinian. It has gone even further than the white folks in Alabama have done in destroying their homes, forbidding them on public transport, forbidding them even to walk on certain streets. walling them into ghettos. As Haaretz has often noted, Israel is profoundly racist.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44309.htm
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Then, there's this prediction of a future that is very, very probable. The U.S. knows it, too. And it is quite possible that the major American capitalists will decide on a nuclear war to prevent this from happening. It would be a war that would, at the least, kill tens of millions, some of them us.
You don't think they would do that?

You don't think that the people who killed uncounted millions Vietnam (plus sixty thousand Americans), and since then have been killing in places like Guatemala and Libya and Iraq and Afghanistan would do such a thing?
Or you think they would realize it's a stupid thing to do because it could also lead to massive American deaths?

What on earth evidence do you have to believe that these people would not do something that is cruel, murderous and stupid?

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/The-New-Silk-Roads-and-the-Rise-of-the-Chinese-Dream-20160224-0017.html
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Obama has long made it clear he has no intention of doing anything significant about climate change and renewable energy. Of course not. Any party that proposed that would be cut off from their billions in payoffs from the oil industry.

Nor has Canada made any great show of progress. As for New Brunswick...dream on.

Here's an example of how much most western leaders want more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Like I said earlier - cruel, murderous, and stupid.
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And here's one that should be no surprise.

http://www.usapoliticstoday.com/watchdog-names-clinton-most-corrupt-politician-of-2015/
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Los Angeles is coming to grips with homeless people who were living in tents or nothing at all, but who recently been moving into tiny shacks put up by concerned citizens. So the city has decided to take action. It's kicking them out, and destroying the shacks on the grounds they aren't sanitary.
Well, yeah. Nothing like a tent or a sidewalk if you want to be sanitary.
America: where all people are free and equal.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tiny-houses-seized-20160224-story.html
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A final note for the day. The capitalist system and its leaders in the U.S., Canada, Russia, China, Britain and others are driving the world through dreadful hardship and terminal risk in order to make their wallets fatter.

Government by capitalism does not work. We have to put the brakes on these people. They have to learn (and we have to learn) that world government by capitalists does not work. It never has.

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About Me

born into poverty in Montreal. (1933 was a bad year to be born.) Kicked out of school in grade 11. Became factory hand, office boy.
Did a general BA, mostly at night at Sir George Williams University, and partly while a youth worker for YMCA, camps, etc. Then teacher training at McGill.
Taught gradea 7 to 11 for six years. Loved it.
Quit to do MA at Acadia, then PhD (History) at Queen's.
Taught history three years at UPEI, then some 35 years at Concordia U in Montreal.
Loved the teaching. Thought the profs had more pompous and useless asses among then than is really desirable outside a zoo.
work experience:
factory, office,social group work, office,camp director, teacher.
Radio - c. 3000 broadcasts, mostly current events.
TV - many hundred appearances, mostly commentaries.
Film - some writing, advising, voice-overs.
Writing - no count, some hundreds. Some academic, but mostly for popular market, and ranging from short stories to stories to newspaper and magazine columns to history books.
professional speaker - close to 2000.
Awards for the above? yep